Book Description:Shelley: The Pursuit is the book with which Richard Holmes, recognized as one of the most distinguished literary biographers writing today, first made his name. Dispensing with the established picture of Shelley as a blandly ethereal character, Holmes winner of the Somerset Maugham Award projects a startling image of, as he writes, 'a darker and more earthly, crueler and more capable figure.' Here we have the real Shelley at last radical agitator, atheist, and apostle of free love, as well as a brilliant and uncompromising poetic innovator.